They say that the fairies are happiest on Midsummer Eve when the bonfires are lit, but that on Halloween they’re at their gloomiest for it’s the start of the winter. This is the night when the veil between our world and theirs is at its flimsiest, when the ghosts dance, the witches cast their spells, and the pooka is out and on the prowl.

The story below is from the manuscripts of the National Folklore Collection in UCD, and tells of how the attempted abduction of a young girl was foiled because she carried a pair of metal tongs. Metal objects are well-known for their strong protective properties against supernatural beings, it was just as well she had the forethought to be carrying them.

“Long years ago there was a house in our back field, and a man named Mylie Reilly was living in it. One evening his daughter went out to bring home the ducks, and lucky enough, she happened to bring the tongs with her. She was putting the ducks out of the river when she was seized by the ‘gentry’ [the fairies]. They brought her a ‘mile of ground’ but they had to let her go because she had the tongs with her. She was half the night away and her people were out looking for her. She was all torn by bushes and briars when she got back home.”
(Barney Gargan, Tierworker, collector PJ Gaynor 1941, NFC 792-447 – Cited in Marsh, R. 2013 Meath Folk Tales. Dublin: The History Press.)

Boo!

And because Yeats is one of my favourite poets, a couple of verses from The Stolen Child, which is even better if you listen to the fabulous Waterboys singing it.

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats.
There we’ve hid our faery vats
Full of berries,
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild,
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us, he’s going,
The solemn-eyed;
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside.
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast;
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild,
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.